


Under Sail

by looleebelle



Category: Generation Kill, The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Angst, Character Death, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, Post-War, Violence, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-03-01 09:41:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2768489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/looleebelle/pseuds/looleebelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All things considered, best laid plans, etc etc, so on and so forth. If the whole world went to shit, where would you rather be?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under Sail

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Perpetual Motion (perpetfic)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/perpetfic/gifts).



> Inspired by a wonderful prompt and the poem 'Only Death' (sometimes also called 'Death Alone') by Pablo Neruda. Based on the characters as depicted in David Simon's HBO series 'Generation Kill', based on Evan Wright's book of the same name. Only the OCs are mine and none of them are real anyway so not making any money here.

He likes the way the dust plumes when the stones hit the dirt. He throws one after the other, watching the way they ping off the rocks haphazardly; they remind him of bullets, rounds ricocheting off Humvee, off body armour, off trees until they find flesh to embed themselves in with a thud.

He follows the rocks with his eyes until they teeter and lie still. Then he throws another. He wonders what the fuck they’re doing, why they’re still there, but then he looks over at the men sitting next to him and realises all over again that he has no choice. He has to keep going.

This time the rock veers right, hits the car tyre and arcs off up into the wheel arch with a clang of metal.

“Ray, don’t dent my car.”

Ray’s not sure if it’s the helplessness he feels or the quick flush of Dutch courage that rides through his veins but he snorts, gives a wry grin at no one in particular.

“Not like they’re policing our shit now, holmes. Pull the OCD stick outta your ass and lighten the fuck up.”

He raises his hand to throw another rock, but a hand catches his arm and stops him dead. He sets his chin defiantly, sets his jaw hard before he looks up. Walt’s face is quiet, his expression unreadable. The guilt that Ray feels is almost as annoying as the anger and rebelliousness that simmers low in his gut these days. He hates that he hates to upset Walt. It annoys Ray that he can’t control his feelings around Walt, that he can’t NOT go that little bit further, a little bit harder, a little bit longer, for Walt just because he asks.  He doesn’t even have to ask.

*

Six weeks of freedom. Six weeks of sand, surf and cheap, Mexican beer. Or that’s how it was supposed to be. Now he’s lost count of the weeks since they left San Diego, the whole world’s gone to hell in a hand basket and there’s not a fucking thing they can do about it.

Libo can suck his white trash, trailer-park dick for all Ray cares.

*

“Jesus fucking Christ, it’s hotter than your mom in that picture she sent me yesterday, Brad.”

“Shut the fuck up, Ray.”

It ends there. It just…stops. Ray stares at Brad for a moment, waiting for the usual diatribe about his parentage, the usual insults on his manhood, but nothing comes. Again. Brad just continues to stare straight ahead through the windscreen of the Jeep. There’s nothing scarier to Ray than a quiet Iceman. A quiet Iceman is either a) angry b) worried or c) all of the above, none of which, Ray knows from experience, generally bode well for their ongoing survival. And Ray likes living. He rather likes it a lot. There are beers to be drunk, guns to be shot, titties to be groped, cocks to be sucked. The way their week’s been going Ray’s pretty sure he’s not gonna be doing a lot more of any of those and it makes him kind of depressed. Sitting next to Mr Super-Fun isn’t helping the situation.

“Fuck this,” he announces. “I’m gonna go find Walt.”

There’s no answer from the front seat and Ray’s not even sure Brad heard him, but then he hears his name. Brad tosses his SIG through the window.

“Take this. Don’t get dead. Either of you. I need my RTO, Ray.”

Ray catches it and tucks it into his shorts before turning and walking towards the house.

*

Cabo is not the worst place to be caught when the zombie apocalypse drops, in Ray’s opinion. I mean, there could be worse places. They could be in Dallas. Ground Zero. They could be in Washington, the first place the Russians trained their missiles on after word got out. Hell, they could be back in Pendleton at REDCON 1, or deployed out unfucking the mess the National Guard left in the wake of their attempts to control the situation, or out fighting the herds of Walkers on containment lines somewhere in the Rockies. But no, they’re on libo in Cabo – which has a nice ring to it, Ray thinks. Sounds like a song. He says as much to Walt, who just rolls his eyes and grins, then turns back to his watch.

Walt says. “Watch your sector, Ray. And for the love of God, do not start singing.”

“Sure thing, sweet pea.”

“Shut up, you idiot.”

*

Turns out the Mexicans had the border thing nailed all along. Turns out they were just fucking with the States so Uncle Sam would pony up the dough to stop their Mexican tax dollars jumping the fence and making for The American Dream. Makes perfect sense to Ray now and he’s quite happy to tell anyone within earshot. Within twenty-four hours of it all going down President Nieto had sentries posted every hundred meters along the US/Mexico border armed to the hilt with the finest Soviet weaponry money could buy. Kitted out with NVGs and thermal imaging, no one got in or out after the border was closed.

The irony of it all does not escape any of them.

Every so often, Ray could hear the sound of jets passing to the east, their jet streams visible just above the horizon as they fly low to avoid radar. He’s not sure if they’re American or Brazilian or fucking North Korean, not after the news reports stopped coming through on the villa’s scratchy black and white TV. When the radio cuts out a week later there’s still no cure in sight. It really doesn’t matter anymore. Ray pretty much already knows they’re fucked when they stopped estimating the death toll in hundreds of thousands and just start listing counties instead.

Vernon County is listed on Friday. Day eleven.

Ray climbs onto the roof of the villa sometime in the early hours of Saturday. He greets the sunrise with a glass of water and a stale cookie and tries not to think about his mom and his gramma and his little sister. He stares down into his glass; it’s all they have left. He wishes it was whisky. Or bourbon. Or beer. Fuck, he’d be happy with watered down hoochie methylated spirits but he should be so lucky.

Walt joins him after lunch. They sit in silence and watch the boats as, one after another, they cruise out of the bay and off into the Pacific, their bows cutting high, foamy waves through the azure sea. Ray wishes he was on one. He glances sideways.

Maybe he wishes Walt was with him.

Ray can hear them calling his name. He doesn’t answer. Brad’s gonna kill them but Ray no longer gives a fuck. He closes his eyes and listens to Walt’s breathing: rhythmic, comforting, and strong.

*

They climb down at midnight, when the clouds move in to cover the constellations and galaxies Walt is patiently pointing out to him against the inky black night sky. Ray’s kind of in awe; no one he knows can tell Sagittarius from the Southern Cross. No one else he knows can quell the helplessness when he feels like he’s about to drown in it. No one he knows can make his skin arc and pulse with just a touch. It warms him better than any blanket.

*

Brad doesn’t speak to him for two days, which is good because Ray’s about a second from laying the smackdown on Brad’s Aryan ass if he so much as whispers another order Ray’s direction.

They’re not in Iraq anymore, Toto.

*

Day seventeen. They’re all still alive.

*

He hoards the seeds on a plate that he sets on his window ledge. They dry quickly in the sun, shrinking and wrinkling until they’re almost nothing at all. He carries them carefully outside and presses them into the dirt, gently sprinkling his morning beer bottle of water over them, his ration of drinking water saved for this specific purpose. Another thing for Brad to add to the _Reasons To Kill Ray Person_ list.

Stay hydrated, stay alive.

The dirt is warm and damp, cool under the surface when Ray pokes his finger down a half inch and drops the large corn kernels in.

“You don’t wanna water those yet.”

Ray looks up; Walt sits down in the dirt, leans against the stucco wall of the house.

“You wanna let them sit for a few days, get warm in the soil, then water ‘em. They’ll rot away if you water them too quick.”

Ray stares at Walt for a moment, not sure what to say. Finally he just takes a swig from the half empty water bottle and sits down beside him.

“How long’d you think it’ll take?”

“Three, maybe five days if we keep the water up to them.”

“Cool.”

They watch the sun rise over the hills behind the villa until the heat forces them inside.

*

“Know what I miss? I miss ‘que, man. BBQ pork and chicken fried in bacon grease. Potato salad, with proper cooked potatoes, not the rubbery floury crap you get from the Quick Dine. And blackberry cobbler, the good shit - the kind with pie crust, not the weird bullshit fucking cake monstrosity. Oh, and iced tea. Holy fucking shit, a big old-fashioned pitcher of iced-fucking-tea. Oh my God, Walter, I’m getting hard just thinking about it.”

“I’m getting coronary heart disease just listening to you.”

“You say that now my friend, but gimme a day on a BBQ and I’ll blow your mind with my culinary delights.”

Walt shakes his head, chuckling quietly. Ray grins to himself and then and there decides his mission every day is to make Walt Hasser blush like a girl, because it’s kind of endearing. He watches as Walt washes the potato in his hands carefully. It’s a small potato, one of only a half dozen left. They have a lot of mouths to feed.

“Here.” Ray hands him his knife. “Peel the skins off ‘em.”

“Ray, we can’t—“

Ray rolls his eyes. “I’m not gonna fucking throw ‘em out, just do it already. Keep some ‘tato on, too. Need some potato on fried potato skins or they’re just fried fucking skin and there’s already plenty of that around here.”

They prepare food in silence.

“Ray, take this.”

Ray holds out his hand and takes the knobby, brown off-cut of potato.

“Plant it in your garden,” Walt says when Ray stares at it blankly. “We’ll grow more.”

Ray does as he’s told.

*

They do grow more. The little knots put out roots and tubers and keep pushing leaves up through the mounded dirt until the stacks are two feet high. Glossy, slightly-furry leaves sprout proudly from the tops, strong and thriving. Walt shows Ray how to protect them from the sea mists and frosts with tarps they find in the garage.

When Walt and Ray push over the mounds they find enough potatoes to keep them going right through autumn, winter and beyond. Ray makes an eggy version of potato salad (minus the cream and mayonnaise because that shit got eaten months ago) for Thanksgiving. They all get the shits from it but no one cares because for the first time since this whole fucking thing started they’re doing more than just surviving.

*

The door to the bedroom Ray shares with Walt and Brad creaks and sways in the Coromuel winds that always come a few hours before sunset each night. None of the interior doors shut properly since they ratfucked the mechanisms to fix the front door after the last time someone tried to break in. The noise annoys the shit out of him but the breeze cools the house down, blows away the flies and bugs that drive them mad during the day, and surrounds them with the heady salt-smell of the Pacific, so he figures it’s a small price to pay.  

*

The farmer who owns the house they’re holed up in gives them food in exchange for protection from anyone who might venture up the hills from the village below. It’s a fucking morbid arrangement but it works for them and Ray’s home-grown vegetables only get them so far.

Brad’s the only one who goes out to meet him. When Ray watches Brad walk up the hill that first time the twang of resentment is sharp and deep. Later that night, as he sits on the roof studying the stars and watching Brad show Walt, Christeson and Stafford advanced hand-to-hand techniques, the balmy evening breeze seems to break through his mood and he suddenly gets it. It’s not about him anymore, it’s about _them_ and nothing’s changed since they left Baghdad.

Brad still watches over all of them.

*

Ray stares down at the chicken, who stares back at him blankly. Chicken-like.

“Sorry, Henny Penny, it’s just the way it is. Nature. The food chain.”

The chicken scratches in the dirt at Ray’s feet.

“The thing is, Chicken Little, I have opposable thumbs and the law of the jungle says that I have to eat you because…”

Ray pauses. The chicken pecks at his shoelaces.

“Aw, fuck. _WAAAAAAALLLLLLLT_.”

Living off the grid is harder than he thought it would be.

*

The chicken tastes better than it looked.

*

Eleven weeks, two days.

They relax the watches during the day, a little out of practicality but mostly out of laziness. They haven’t seen an unfamiliar person for weeks. No one’s tried to break in for almost as long. No one comes up the mountain and they see no one but the farmer and his donkey cart on the road winding around the mesas and rocky outcrops off behind them.

There are lots of other jobs to do - cart water, repair the doors, string barbed wire to the garden fences, tend the vegetable garden – which also gives Ray plenty of time to figure out exactly how much he hates it there (more than Christmas at his crazy aunt Ruby’s place) and how much he wants to just fire up the Jeep and get out of there (not a whole lot, because he’s tried before and Brad nearly broke his hand against the wheel arch). Plenty of time to think about how much he misses his mom, how much he misses stupid things that he thought he hated, like Thanksgiving at his stepmom’s, Valentines’ Day, sitting in traffic on the I5 waiting to get into Pendleton with the rest of the fucking base on a Monday morning, and how fucking hard it is to pick a tub of Ben and Jerry’s when there’s no Coffee Toffee Bar Crunch. The way Walt’s hair has suddenly become long and curly against the nape of his neck. How Walt always licks his fingers in the same order when he’s finished eating his chicken. How Walt always blushes red to his shirt collar when Ray blows kisses and serenades him from the rooftop every morning when Walt gets up to take over watch.

Ray smiles and checks his watch; seven forty-five.

Eight hours until then.

*

They’re sitting in the kitchen trying to figure out how to make one potato, two ears of corn, a bell pepper, rice and leftover chicken into a meal, when Brad suddenly raises a hand and shushes them into silence.

“Can anyone else hear that?” His voice is low and serious. Ray’s fingers automatically close around the Glock on the table in front of him; Stafford immediately hits the kill switch on the hurricane lamp. They sit in silence for a moment; the darkness is as quiet as the light. Ray looks around the table: at Walt, Lilley, Stafford and Christeson; their youthful faces are drawn and weathered now. He can’t see Garza and Christopher’s faces but Ray’d put even money that they’re not the same anymore either. None of them are.

Except for Brad. Brad hasn’t changed. He’s still the same old unreadable Brad, sitting still, head cocked, listening, at the end of the table.

Ray’s about to announce that Brad’s finally lost it but then he hears it, too. He almost misses it in the rustling of the bushes outside and the slight wail of the wind through the gaps in the door.

“There,” Brad murmurs. He signals Garza to one window while he heads to another on the other side of the room. The _whomp whomp whomp_ of aircraft drifts through between the sounds of the night; Brad circles a hand above his head.

 _Helicopters_.

The noise gets louder and louder until the two helicopters fly overhead.

“EC-725s,” Brad notes quietly as he watches through binoculars. “Mexican Airforce. They’re landing in the village.”

“They’re picking up people,” he relays after a moment.

“Or taking people away,” Ray replies quietly. Brad looks up from the binoculars sharply.

“We don’t know that.”

Ray rolls his eyes and stands up. “Walt, get the fire. I’m making risotto.”

“No, fire makes smoke.”

“Oh for the love of…” Ray meets Brad’s eyes defiantly for a minute; Brad doesn’t look away. Ray feels a slight churn of fear that Brad might try and break his hand again.

“Fine.” He throws his hands in the air. “Whatever. You guys have the raw corn and old chicken. I’ll take watch.”

His appetite is long gone now, anyway.

*

When Brad comes back from meeting with the farmer the next day he says the people taken away by the helos were Americans. There’s a long and heated discussion of the technological capabilities of the Mexican army but given the border situation Ray’s certain that all bets are off, so they start clearing and digging a bunker.

*

For a week after he finds the bottle of tequila Ray’s dreams are awash with lucid dreams about getting wasted and passing out in the sun. In his dreams he gets no hangover and there are no zombies; just Ray, Walt, the bottle of tequila and the sun.

Ray remembers vividly where he found it: hidden in an old shoe down near the shed that houses the old pick-up that doesn’t work anymore, no matter how many times Ray fiddles with the electrics and pokes at the pistons. It’s just plain dead. Rusted to death. Seized. Either way he looks at it, there are no glory runs for Ray Person. He had visions of getting it going, driving it down the hill to the house and presenting it to them with a flourish, Brad looking at him in that we he used to when Ray did something that both amused and impressed him, the way he hasn’t done now in a while.

Ray tries to pretend that doesn’t bother him as much as it actually does.

So he hides the bottle of tequila he found in the old shoe under the bush beside the old shed that houses the old pick-up and saves it for a rainy day, or the day they run out of bullets, or his birthday. Or whatever.

*

Four months, thirteen days.

Stafford keeps a calendar of sorts on the wall in the room he shares with Christeson. Ray looks at it sometimes, counts the little lines wondering why the fuck they’re still there only to realise the reason they’re still there is that they have nowhere else to go.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

*

He gives the bottle of tequila to Walt for his birthday.

Dinner was nothing: a few stale tortillas and a can of beans Brad bartered from the farmer and a half a tomato each, but Ray feels full. Walt squeezes his hand and smiles at him; Ray lets the warm glow of something forgotten flood through him as he lies back and stares up at the sky, remembering what it’s like to _feel_.

*

Four months, twenty eight days, nineteen hours.

Walt kisses Ray, and Ray kisses him back. It’s soft, shy and completely wonderful.

“What are you, a US Marine or a girl?” Ray teases him quietly, twining his fingers in Walt’s against the wall beside his head. He pushes back gently, not really wanting to go anywhere. Everything glows orange and radiates heat, and Ray’s not entirely sure where he stops and the earth begins. He feels part of _this_. He closes his eyes and nudges Walt’s nose with his own, brushes past Walt’s lips like a ghost; Walt’s breath is a fast staccato beat against his skin.

“Kiss me properly, Walter,” he whispers.

Walt huffs something between a laugh and a groan, and catches Ray’s mouth in a kiss that presses him back into the wall and takes his breath away. The stucco digs into Ray’s skull a little, his lips are chapped and he tastes blood for a second. Every inch of him aches beyond his twenty eight years but in that moment Ray feels like he could live forever.

*

When they come it’s the middle of the night.

“Contact north!”

Brad’s voice booms through the house and the sound of gunshots jolts Ray from his sleep, and he rolls off the bed onto the floor. A bullet smashes through the window and embeds itself in the wall above his bed. He swears a blue streak and scrambles for the SIG on the lamp table, nearly barrelling into Walt as he waits for a lull in the gunfire and bolts for the nearest north-facing window. Walt’s face is ashen and drawn and Ray can’t think, can’t breathe, can’t move fast enough because the sudden urge to protect his people is overwhelming and all-encompassing and suffocating.

*

His aim is still good. The rhythm takes over: aim, breathe, fire, reload.

It hums like a mantra through his body and for the first time in a long time Ray feels the world slow down and a calm cloak of inevitability fall over him.

It might be the end of the world, but it’s still war, baby.

*

There are five bodies in the sand when the sun rises in the morning. None of them are American.

Ray joins Brad on the roof, looking down over them.

“I can’t believe it took those reprobates nearly six months to find us. Fucking amateurs.”

Brad doesn’t reply for a while. He’s quiet when he finally speaks.

“They’ll come again. When their people don’t come back.”

“So we’ll take them out again, dude. Don’t be so fucking defeatist.”

“We shouldn’t have stayed so long,” Brad says. His voice has a deadly calm that makes Ray’s skin crawl.

“We have no idea what’s out there now.”

“Well, holmes,” Ray announces, standing up. He slaps Brad on the back. “Only one fucking way to find out.”

Brad squints up at him with a lopsided grin.

*

Friday, May twenty-second.

Ray watches through binos as Stafford, Lilley and Brad descend into the darkness of the valley. He watches until it’s too dark to see anything. He waits for the miniscule flash of Brad’s pen torch that lets him know they’re inside the perimeter fence.

“They’re in,” he relays to Walt, seated beside him. Christeson sits on the table behind them. “Okay my friends, it’s time to move. We got fifteen mikes to make it to the rendezvous point.”

Their gear is already packed and ready by the door but Ray does a final sweep just to be sure. He’s shining his flashlight around the pantry when there’s a sound behind him and Ray jumps; Walt appears in the beam.

“Dude you fucking scared me,” Ray scolds him, scowling. He takes Walt’s hand; there’s a quiver in Walt’s grasp that he only barely feels, but it’s there. Ray looks at him carefully.

“It’s gonna be alright, dude,” he murmurs.

Walt shrugs, nods, squeezes his hand, pulls Ray in close.

There’s a moment when Ray’s kissing him that Ray almost believes his own words. When there’s a hand on his cheek, sliding up the back of his neck into his hair, when Walt’s body is pressed against his and the hard jut of his hips against Ray’s own ( _Jesus, they’ve gotten skinny these last few months_ ) when Ray starts to believe they might make it out.

*

Out is a fluid concept these days.

Ray stares down at the crude grave marker out back of the cantina in the middle of nowhere. He feels sacrilegious leaving a man behind but there’s no way they’re taking a body with them when there’s a chance it might kill them while they sleep. It’s a conversation he doesn’t even want to start with Brad, who’s suddenly looking older, like he’s aged a hundred years in a few hours.

“C’mon gents. We’re Oscar Mike.”

Brad turns the key and the Humvee starts. Ray sighs and climbs in next to Stafford. In the pale fingers of moonlight that reach through the Humvee window, Ray can see Q-Tip’s tear-stained cheeks and he turns away, unsure, thankful again that the darkness hides them from one another.

They leave the cantina to the dogs and the undead.

*

Turns out the darkness hides a lot of things.

It comes out of the back of the cave without warning, taking Brad by surprise. Ray puts a bullet in it and it takes both Brad and Walt to pull him off of it as he plunges his ka-bar into its skull, over and over and over again.  

He pretends to be asleep but he feels Walt gently take the knife from his hand later that night. He falls asleep listening to Walt humming country songs to himself as he uses it to sharpen pieces of wood into sharp-ended weapons effective against the living and the dead.

They’re running out of bullets.

*

Ray feels like he’s going mad with hunger and thirst.

He looks at himself in the rear vision mirror as they pull away from the cave: his eyes are sunken and his skin lank, sunburnt and peeling in places. He reminds himself of the Iraqis on the road to Baghdad, fleeing the city and the Republican Guard with their belongings strapped to their backs, scared and hungry and hopeless, caught between a rock and a hard place with soldiers behind them and soldiers in front of them. He remembers their faces and the way they stared ahead looking right through him, uninterested in anything other than putting one foot in front of the other, resigned and acceding to death.

He wonders if this is what they all feel like before the end.

*

Where the fuck are we?”

“Stafford, I swear you couldn’t find your own dick in a whore house, seriously holmes, how the fuck did you even get through BRS?”

“Shut the fuck up, Person.”

Garza reaches forward from his seat in the back and snatches the map from Stafford. He flattens it over his knees, trying to steady it while the wind tries to rip it from his hands as it roars in the Humvee windows.

“We’re about one hundred and eighty clicks north of La Paz,” he announces after a moment. “About fifty clicks south of Ciudad Constitucion.”

“Roger that,” Brad replies, yanking on the steering wheel without warning. They leave the bitumen and hurtle over the shoulder and down onto a dirt track. Mountainss rise in the distance, dark and stony.

“Err, perfectly good road back there, Sir,” Garza calls from the back. Someone hits their head and swears a blue streak as the Humvee bounces violently.

“Stay off the MSR, stay alive.”

Apparently that passes for an explanation in Bradley Land because he says nothing more. Ray glares at him as the Humvee lurches again, skidding and weaving.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Brad,” Ray exclaims scrambling for a handhold probably more than is absolutely necessary. “Are you actually trying to kill us all? Fuck me.”

“Shut up, Ray.”

 “This is why they never let the woman drive. Challenger? Woman driving. Costa Concordia? Woman.”

“Which is why you’re in the passenger seat today, my buck-toothed, in-bred hillbilly friend. And for what it’s worth, the Costa Concordia was driven by a man, you retard. Now shut the fuck up and watch your sector.”

*

“What do your youthful eyes tell you, young warrior?”

Stafford squints, then brings the binoculars back to his eyes. Shrugging, he hands them back to Brad.

“Fucked if I know, sir. Could be anything.”

“I make….” Brad pauses, counting silently, “fifteen, maybe twenty foot mobiles. Two victors, one motorcycle. 1959 BSA Gold Star, I do believe.” He looks up, smirks. “I call dibs on that one, gentlemen.”

Ray rolls his eyes.

“Fuck your motorcycle, holmes,” he snaps. “If those bastards don’t have food I’m out. You’re on your own.”

“Ray, shut the fuck up.” Brad pauses. “Their perimeter isn’t secure, their defences are weak. There are people lying around like fucking puppy dogs in the sun. I’d say they haven’t seen action in weeks, maybe months. This’ll be a cake walk.”

“They got victors means they’ve got gas,” Stafford adds. “We need gas. I vote we kick their motherfucking asses and take whatever’s useful.”

Brad’s grin is lazy but there’s a determined glint in his eye; Ray pushes down the niggling feeling of foreboding that rises into his frontal lobe.

They dig in for a few hours, waiting for nightfall.

*

It is a cake walk.

It takes less than five minutes to capture the compound and clear the bare brick buildings. They hold the two they find in the sleeping quarters, the ones who don’t shoot back. Information is power, and thus far they’ve been able to find out exactly zero intel on who the enemy is these days so a little waterboarding is fine by Ray’s conscious right now.

He leaves Brad and Garza to the interrogation and wanders out into the darkness again. Walt leans against a rock a little ways away from the camp, staring down toward the coast below. Lights flicker on and off as they watch.

“There are people down there,” he says. “Lights came on when the shooting stopped.”

Ray nods. “We should get ready for visitors then, holmes. If they’re not friendlies they’ll be looking to check up on their buddies that we just schwacked.”

Walt and Ray take out five more that night. In the morning they drag the bodies up the hill and burn them with the rest.

Their hostages are a wealth of information; Garza translates most of it and they figure out the rest in a weird mix of pantomime and Pictionary. Ray takes it as a good sign that the two men shed their uniforms as soon as they’re untied but still, he doesn’t trust them as far as he can throw them so he’s happy when Brad keeps them locked up.

Ray’s also happy to find an ablution block behind the sleeping quarters, complete with shower and head.  It’s like fucking Christmas and birthday all rolled into one, and Ray’s never been so glad to feel fresh water roll over his skin in his life. He scrubs until he’s clean and then scrubs some more just because he can. The water is cold but the evening air is still hot so it does little to remove from the experience. Ray’s enjoying the silence that water drumming on his skull brings when he feels hands sliding around his waist and another naked body pressing flush with his. Ray swears and bucks his hips when fingers find his cock; he reaches around and pulls Walt’s mouth to his, kisses deep and wet and noisily but he no longer gives a fuck who hears him because then he’s coming and it’s Walt and him and everything else is just white noise.

*

Their captives are adamant that there are just civilians left in the village below. Brad is sceptical but no matter the threat the two Mexicans stick to their story. No one knows what to think.

Two days later Ray, Brad, Walt, Garza and one of the Mexicans carefully pick their way down into the village.

It appears deserted at first. Out of the corner of his eye, Ray sees curtains move and he feels for the Glock at his hip. Brad already has his drawn. The Mexican glances at him and mutters something in an annoyed tone.

“He says you’ll only scare them with that thing,” Garza translates.

“Better to be scaring people than fucking dead,” Brad retorts.

“Hey, look.”

Walt points up the street. An old lady stands out the front of a house. She holds a colourful calico bag in her hands. Brad turns around slowly and walks towards her, gesturing for them to follow.

“Hello?” he calls. “Do you speak English?”

The lady calls something back in Spanish and Brad sighs.

“Fucking terrific.”

Ray grins. “Dude, we’re in Mexico. What’d you fucking expect? Urdu?”

Brad glares at him. The old lady walks out into the street to meet them. There are tears in her eyes and she grasps at Brad’s shirt and reaches up to pat his cheek. She smiles and there are tears in her eyes.

“Gracias. Usted es una bendición.”

*

It’s easy to fall into a routine. The people of the village are mostly older folk who work in the hotel further down the coast. The one that looked like it had had the shit bombed out of it. They are peaceful and friendly, happy to share. They lead them around the village and people come out of houses to shake hands and kiss cheeks, much to Brad’s embarrassment and Ray’s amusement. Eventually, they’re pushed towards a large transportable home on stilts at the edge of the village. Ray’s confused for a second but then he gets it.

 _Casa_.

Brad shakes his head.

“We have a place,” he replies when Garza translates. “We’ll live up there –“ he points at the compound on the hill. “-keep watch. Keep you safe.”

The small group of men talk among themselves. Ray can follow for a little but high school Spanish can only get him so far. So when they nod and hand them bags of supplies he figures an arrangement has been made. When there’s a knock on the compound door the next morning and fresh bread and fruit is shoved into his hands by a smiling lady who looks a little like his gramma, Ray starts to relax a little.

Maybe this is it. Maybe this is where they were supposed to go.

*

“We need to get back to the States.”

“I know.”

“I’m fucking serious, holmes.” Ray feels the hysteria bubbling to the surface. “We can’t just stay here and pretend we’re just like them because we’re fucking not and you know it. We’re not their angels, we’re not their protectors. We’re motherfucking badass US Marines, Brad, and we’re a long way from momma right now.”

“I know.”

“Whattaya mean, I know?! Elaborate! Holmes, this whole Keeper and Protector thing is getting a little old for me. I need to go home.”

“There is no ‘Home’ anymore, Ray,” Brad exclaims, getting to his feet. “What part of ‘The Apocalypse Happened’ do you not fucking understand?”

“I need to see who’s left!”

Ray frightens himself with the amount of venom his words contain. He feels the tears prickling behind his eyeballs and he turns away, angrily balling his fists into his eye sockets and wiping them away. Brad remains silent. After a few moments, Ray throws his hands in the air and stomps outside. Brad doesn’t follow.

*

The tequila appears in front of his face like a mirage. Ray blinks. The vapours don’t disappear and his mouth salivates unbidden.

“Fucking take it before I change my mind,” Brad snaps. Ray takes the tiny glass. Brad sits down beside him in the dirt. On the water below fishing boats return to port for the night, following the golden pathway the sun lays down for them.

“You’re right, Ray.”

Ray glances at him. Brad stares into his own glass intently.

“We need to go home.”

*

Twelve months, one week.

They turn for home.

Ray sits in the back of the Humvee with Stafford and Garza, perched on a box of ammo, watching the receding faces that stare after them. He wonders what would happen if they changed their mind, if they came back in a month. There are few young people in the village to protect the older folk. Ray pushes the thought away that they’re deserters. If they never went home they’d be deserters too. He turns to the front. Walt grins back at him in the rear vision mirror and Ray settles back against his boxes. Stafford snores; he’s already asleep. Ray grins.

If home is gone, maybe they’ll build a new life from what’s left.

He’s pretty sure they’ve already started.


End file.
